Well kids, we’ve almost got this tour wrapped up. It’s been a long and taxing journey, but the hard parts have almost faded from memory as the fun we’ve had easily eclipses the trouble we’ve gone through. 83,000 air miles later we find ourselves in Seattle for the last gig (or almost – more on that later)…

First, all of our other “gigs’ have had between 20 and 50 people at them. Very manageable. For Seattle, we knew it might be a bit bigger and we were expecting around 60. Crowded for the Home Dome (our house) but doable. Then we sent the invitation and watched as the number climbed. What? Do we know this many people? Suddenly the number was above 90 and we knew we had real estate constraints up the wazoo. The week of the party reminded us of that scene in Jurassic Park where they were looking at the water glass on the table and saw it vibrating as the dinosaurs approached from a distance. 90+ people were approaching, and we had no where to put them.

We had catering set up, backstage was ready, and we set off to Costco to acquire some fluids for the show. $1,300 later and twenty or so trips up the stairs to the Home Dome and we were as set as we were gonna get. Also, we only had about 80 t-shirts left.

Once we got started everything fell into place, just like all of the other shows on the tour. Sonya’s parents arrived from the band’s home town and immediately got their tattoos on. Andy set up shop manning the door with clipboard in hand, making sure that backstage passes were on and acting tough in the face of guests he didn’t recognize from the list (and those he did as well).

So how’d we end up? About perfect we would say. We had around 75-80 actually show and thanks to some creative furniture arranging we squeezed everyone in without it feeling like a Tokyo subway ride. What an amazing turnout of friends and to say the least, we were humbled to see that all of these people came out to celebrate our wedding world tour (and to get free food and drinks).

Once the party slowed down to a dull roar, a core group of Sonya’s college friends, a neighbor or two, and Chris the guitar wizard kicked it up a notch and kept at it until around 2:30 am. Not unexpected from a group of former Wazzu students and a stray Sun Devil. Good times.

Now for the clean up.

Oh, and for those that think we are done. Don’t write us off just yet. There are more posts to come and it looks like the Burley, Idaho VIP-only show may happen in May.

The tragedy and the triumph – The Spokanites in New York

(It’s a long one – apologies in advance)

That’s right, things were a bit too easy on the Spokanites Hitched 2010 World Tour up until this point. This is a feat, btw – the total trip took us about 83,000 air miles total (41,500 each) so to have that go smoothly is a near miracle. New York was the last “away game” so-to-speak so we were almost done and feeling great about the whole thing. Mother nature had other ideas – she decided that we should have to earn the last leg of the tour…

We were leaving Seattle a day early for a few reasons. Most notably, trying to do NY from the west coast for two nights just plain sucks, we wanted to spend more time with friends, and some SF-based friends had bought us tickets to “Rock of Ages” on Broadway for the Friday night (thanks Matt & Beth!). On our way to the airport Thursday morning we get the first notice from Robert’s phone – United has called to say our flight has been cancelled due to East Coast weather. Strike one.

Robert gets on the phone and in no time we are confirmed on a red-eye later that night. Now we are getting way too old for red-eyes but its only a small setback, and we get another day at home which is great for Sonya given how busy she is at work at the moment.

Skip to Thursday night. No problems, we not only get on the plane on time but they even got us seats together at the last minute. We have to go through DC because we are burning air miles, but everything goes smoothly except zero sleep for Robert on the way. We arrive at Dulles at 6am where the fun really begins.

Our first flight to JFK gets cancelled around 8am. Luckily Robert still has status with United and he gets on the phone to get us on the next flight, this one to LaGuardia around 10am. The weather map looks amazing (the whole NE covered in a massive blizzard). They say the 10am looks good though. Fingers crossed. Around 9:30 we get another message – the 10am is cancelled now. Back on the phones, Robert get’s us on a 12:50 to Newark, but confidence is low at this point. It’s already late morning on Friday and we need to be on Broadway by 7pm at the latest.

Sonya calls friends, asks for help, etc. while Robert continues to manage the airlines. The feared call comes around 11am – the Newark flight is cancelled as well. Even worse, the next available flight is Saturday morning! Ugh. Time to raise the Spokanites threat level to “Help!”

Help arrives in the form of Amtrak, which is much harder than it sounds. Thanks to Sonya’s friend Chris (thanks!) we were able to avoid the on-hold wait time of 46 MINUTES (What?!?!!) and got Chris to book us some remaining tickets from Union Station in DC to Penn Station in Manhattan. We were out $300+ but the show must go on. Think we are done yet? Wrong…

You would think that the four cancelled flights would be the toughest part. All we had left was the following: a) get our luggage off the plane (we had checked a bag because of all the t-shirts), b) get a taxi to Union Station (which is nowhere near Dulles Airport), and C) get on the train. We had two solid hours to do this so no big worries, right.

The best part came immediately – getting our luggage. After waiting 15 minutes in line at United Customer Service Robert to got to the desk. Here’s the conversation.

ROBERT: “Hi, we’ve had a few cancelled flight and will now be taking the train to New York, so we need to get our checked luggage off the plane.” [hands the bar-coded claim tickets to the agent]

ROBERT: “Uh, two. What? Why aren’t you using the bar-coded luggage claim tickets that are right in front of you. This is how luggage is tracked. Our luggage is not lost, nor are the claim forms. I’m confused.”

AGENT: “OK, it shouldn’t be a problem. You can claim your bags on carousel #1”

ROBERT: [still confused] “Thanks. When should we expect them? We are in a bit of a hurry.”

AGENT: “Oh, they should be out within one and a half hours.”

ROBERT: “What?!? Did you just say AN HOUR AND A HALF to get our bags off of a parked plane in an airport that is mostly standing still [at this point realizing he should give up on this person]… Uh, can you point me to baggage claim. Thanks.”

The Spokanites make there way to baggage claim where they are pointed to a special door for people who need their bags off cancelled flights. A few people were milling about in front of the door, but no airline personnel. A staff member eventually comes through the door and Sonya gives him the ticket. He gives her an odd look and then disappears back through the door without saying anything. Now what? We have no guidance from anyone except the brain trust back in the terminal and now we no longer have our claim tags. We have less than two hours to get to Union Station, which is almost an hour away by taxi. Ugh.

I know this story is taking forever, but we felt you should enjoy some of our pain. To summarize, our bags showed up in about 10 minutes, we got in a taxi, and about 50 minutes and $85 later we were passing the nation’s capital and inside of Union Station with train tickets. We had some lunch and were soon on the train. 26 hours of no sleep for Robert at this point.

The train ride was great, except for the annoying woman behind us who talked at screaming volume on her phone the entire 2+ hours to NY. Frankly I was impressed that her voice could hold out that long, her battery could last, or that anyone would listen to her for that long. Mad skills, I guess.

After four cancelled flights and seeing the weather map, we expected to see some major blizzard action as we approached New York. Manhattan had gotten 10” of snow overnight and was still getting it, according to the news. What did we see? Mostly sunny skies all the way until the tunnel into Manhattan. This included seeing many planes landing at Newark above us, where our flight had been cancelled. Oh well, Murphy’s Law I guess.

Now, this is getting way too long. Back to summary mode:

Made it to Penn Station and to our friends Rob & Melanie’s apartment in time to shower and leave for the show on Broadway.

“Rock of Ages” was awesome for several reasons. a) it was loud an energetic (we still hadn’t slept), b) it was about 80’s hair metal like Quiet Riot, Night Ranger, etc. which was really fun and a perfect fit with the Spokanites Tour, and c) it was a great play.

We followed this up with 12 hours of sleep and a day in the city prior to the “gig,” which was at Bread in the city.

All of our best friends in NY were there minus a couple of weather or baby-related cancellations. The tattoos were once again the hit of the night. We rocked that place and even went out into the city for more after the show. Back by about 2:30am I think.

Last up came the return trip. All was well to San Francisco where we had a short layover until we had our next delay. We were supposed to get in at 10pm, but we eventually rolled into bed around 2am. Like we said, Mother nature wanted us to work for this one.

Thanks New York! We survived it! Back and getting rested now. The biggest tour stop is this weekend in Seattle. Not sure how we will fit 90 people in the Home Dome. Wish us luck.

As a start, San Francisco was great because we were finally a bit rested after the Asia leg and the quick turnaround to Scottsdale. Sonya even had her voice back so everyone was in good spirits. It’s also a bit closer and we were finally done flying United (we’re trying to burn all of the miles we have racked up over the years) – Virgin America is the airline of choice right now for domestic travel. Lastly, the show was being held at the spacious and elegant PNC Coliseum (PNC = Paul & Cynthia’s house) which gave us ample time to spend with these excellent hosts!

The actual event (for us) started with a rental-car visit to Costco to get the beer & wine, followed by a session of re-arranging furniture and toys at the PNC and hanging up Spokanites posters around the house. Next up was the fantastic caterer. I think we should leave it up to all of you fans to comment on her mad skills. Yes, go down to the bottom and leave a comment. We’ll wait…

Another huge highlight was an early visit by Michael & Kara Saucier, who brought a suitcase filled with ingredients to make their signature cocktail, the “Kara-Tini.” They were a huge hit throughout the night with even ardent “I don’t like hard alcohol” folks changing their tune. Big thanks to the Saucier’s for lugging that stuff all the way from Pleasanton on the BART.

I know we’ve said this before, but the real highlights of this and every show so far have been the fans. We sold out once again with 50,000 fans (minus about three zeros) and it was great to see everyone getting into it. Pregnant women with Spokanites tattoos wasn’t even the strangest thing we witnessed. Thanks to everyone for coming out and making it a rock star event.

Before we leave you, we should highlight the next day’s activities. Robert (fortunately) got stuck on clean-up duty at the PNC while Sonya had the luck of being invited to a baby shower. Complete with a nice hangover, she had the pleasure of sitting with 5+ babies playing games that included “smell & guess the flavor of baby food” and “match the celebrity baby to the celebrity.” Yes, with a hangover. Did we mention that Robert was happy to be cleaning up the party mess?